


i am your cross temporal houdini

by suitablyskippy



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Homestuck Shipping Olympics, nakkodiles everywhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 12:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TG: the whole thing is basically just us checking in at humiliation station<br/>TG: a stamp on the passport a stroll through the scanner and a slap on the butt from the pointy raving maniac on security once shes checked out our nudes in the x-ray<br/>TG: you know the drill by now right</p>
<p>(team davecest's submission for HSO 2012, round 3: BALANCING ACT)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i am your cross temporal houdini

You near as fuck don’t make the jump and line after line of jeering teal fills your vision as you cling grimly onto the vast lolling golden tongue of the crocodile temple. The liquid roar of lava crashing down the sides of the cave entirely drowns out any breathless wheezing you may or may not be dealing with; you can smell the hairs on your arms singeing.

GC: G3T UP D4V3!    
GC: YOU 4R3 LY1NG TH3R3 L1K3 TH3 MOST US3L3SS W4ST3 OF OTH3RW1S3 P3RF3CTLY S3RV1C34BL3 PROT31NS 1 H4V3 3V3R 3NCOUNT3R3D   
GC: 1 DO NOT W1SH TO T4ST3 TH3 B1TT3R 4SHY R3FUS3 OF YOUR OV3RCOOK3D CORPS3 ON MY SCR33N FOR TH3 R3ST OF TH1S G4M3 SO G3T TH4T L1COR1C3 RUMP 1N G34R B3FOR3 1T CH4RS! 

You wedge one foot in the gap where the tines of the tongue fork and scrabble the other for purchase on the smooth brassy surface around it. You are stretched out with one cheek pressed into the metal and the metal is hot. The metal is scorching. You’re not sure eternal riches are gonna be worth the damage this is doing to your eyebrows.

voice command, you say.

TG: well look   
TG: or smell or lick or gently nuzzle or whatever the fuck it is youre doing to the pixels making up my helpless prostrate form on your screen right now   
TG: is it not weird i am actually less unnerved by my impending graceless death plummet into an ocean of molten fire than by literally anything you say   
TG: do you not think thats weird tz   
GC: NOP3   
TG: you dont think its weird that youre freakier to me than the prospect of getting better roasted than a fluttershy cosplayer at a brony convention   
GC: TH4T SOUNDS 1NTR1GU1NGLY L3WD BUT NOP3   
TG: you dont think that might be a sign youre doing something wrong here   
TG: just a bit wrong   
GC: NOT 4T 4LL D4V3!    
GC: 1N F4CT 1 TH1NK 4LL OF TH1S M1GHT 4CTU4LLY B3 4 S1GN TH4T YOU 4R3 S1MPLY 4CT1NG L1K3 4 SQU4LL1NG W1GGL3R WHO D1SL1K3S TH3 S3NS4T1ON OF COLD 41R ON TH31R BUTT WH3N TH3 D14P3R COM3S OFF!    
TG: what the fuck   
GC: 1 H4V3 NO 1D34 WHY YOU 4R3 M4K1NG SUCH 4 FUSS   
GC: SUR3LY CH1LL 4S 1CY 4S YOURS C4N W1THST4ND 4NY D3GR33 OF H34T W1TH ONLY M1N1M4L D1SCOMFORT >;]

jesus fuck, you say to the tongue, but the tongue has as little sympathy as Terezi and it is left to you to drag yourself upright again, with one mighty wrench and a frantic stagger uphill to the point where it begins to droop, the soles of your sneakers skidding uncontrollably over the metal. When the mouth of the temple yawns above you, you throw your arms up and grab onto one gleaming fang overhead but it’s burning hot and it scalds you, and you let go with a yell and a stumble and that’s how you finally enter the temple: wildly slaloming the whole length of a gargantuan brass crocodile’s tongue, scooting on your behind like some dumb prepubescent shit who lost control on the slip-n-slide, the only difference the negligible fact that the major risk here is boiling your flesh from your bones in an instant ignivomous immolation, not landing in mommy’s herbaceous perennials.

You crash down inside the temple on a floor of golden bricks and scramble to your feet before Terezi can start laughing at you.

GC: DO YOU KNOW SOM3TH1NG D4V3! 

You’ve got no idea how the fuck you end up telling yourself every single time that there could ever be any way of stopping Terezi laughing at you.

TG: not a single thing   
TG: this message is coherent english by pure chance

The echoing boom of lava hitting lava is exactly as loud within and the heat is stifling, pressing down from high red walls covered in gibberish carvings. You want to change your suit because in thick black velvet you imagine you’re coming across kind of like a steam-cooked vampire, but fuck if you’re gonna let her see you pussy out. You loosen the knot on your tie, undo a couple buttons, push back your sleeves, run your hand back through your hair like you’re going for artfully tousled as opposed to desperately seeking cool, and you check your shades.

Something weird is echoing in the distance.

GC: 1 4LW4YS 4SSUM3D TH4T TH3 34RTH HUM4N COOLK1D W4S SO R4R3 B3C4US3 TH3R3 4R3 SO F3W 34RTH HUM4NS C4P4BL3 OF D34L1NG W1TH TH3 HYPOTH3RM1C T3MP3R4TUR3S 4 TRU3 COOLK1D MUST N4V1G4T3 THROUGH   
TG: ok you can stop right there tz youve nailed it   
TG: youve pinned it down and screwed it till it hobbled away bowlegged

There’s a skittering, indistinct honking sound and it’s getting closer. You equip your shitty half a sword, just on the offchance that whatever’s hunting you down in your nightmare holocaust land of burning steel and reeking grease and gigantic groaning cogs rotating slowly in every high arched ceiling is not doing it just to pat you on the back and offer you a hearty well done for your stalwart efforts so far.

GC: BUT NOW TH3 TRUTH H4S B33N M4D3 CL34R TO M3! 

You blow your fringe up out of your eyes again and start forwards. Your patent suit shoes click against the bricks but fuck it, if you didn’t warn every jpeg monster in the temple you were coming you’d have even more of an advantage than your incomparable smoothness with a fully busted blade already gives you, and, real fucking talk, where’s the fun in fighting an enemy you stand the slightest chance against?

GC: TH3 R34SON TH3R3 4R3 SO F3W 34RTH HUM4N COOLK1DS 1S B3C4US3 TH3R3 4R3 SO F3W 34RTH HUM4NS 4T 4LL WHO 4R3 W1LL1NG TO TRY YOUR P4RT1CUL4R BR4ND OF J4CK4SS3RY! 

nak, come the echoes, naknak nak  
naknakNAKnaknaknaknakNAAAAK  
naknak  
nak?   
nak!!!!!! naknaknaaaknak!   
naknak nak nak

GC: NOT 3V3RYON3 1S 4S 4STON1SH1NGLY K33N TO HURL TH3MS3LV3S ONTO TH31R BUTTS WH1L3 N4V1G4T1NG P3R1LOUSLY V3RT1G1NOUS ST4TU4RY 4S YOU D4V3

Round the corner barrels a snaptoothed horde of swarming honking red chaos, big glassy reptile eyes and a weird shambling run, claws clicking out rat-a-tat like a thousand blind secretaries desperately trying to churn out a brand new Shakespeare by clock-off hour.

GC: D1D YOU KNOW L4V4 1S M4D3 OF MOLT3N STON3! 1F YOU H4D F4LL3N YOU WOULD H4V3 3XPLOD3D 1NTO 4 BL4Z1NG CH1L1 P3PP3R 1NF3RNO B3FOR3 YOU 3V3N R34CH3D 1T

Your temple is infested with waist-high crimson crocodiles. You’re ready with your sword just in case, but there’s a dopey, toothy, dumb-as-fuck look to them that’s unnervingly more Egbertian than maniacal.

Stubby webbed red claws smack aimlessly at your legs.

GC: 1N F4CT TH4T 1S TH3 ONLY R34SON 1 W4S W4TCH1NG D4V3   
GC: YOU G3T K1ND OF PR3D1CT4BL3 FROM H3R3 ON OUT >:[ 

You realize the webbed red claws are not in fact smacking aimlessly the moment your feet leave the floor.

whoa guys, you say.  
take a minute youre fucking up the archetype here  
i broke into the temple so i bag the loot i ravish the women thats how it works  
i choose my delicate and lovely new wife from the cream of your lets be honest objectively freaky reptilian crop not vice versa  
put me down

They do not put you down.

Cool scaly arms tug at the back of your jacket: your head goes down and your feet go up and before you can even message Terezi with a line chill enough to preemptively deflect the mocking you know is about to smack down your inbox you are being borne through the temple on your back, swept up in the stumpy arms of miniature swamp monsters. Their claws must be shredding your suit but to be bothered by that you’d need at least the shattered remnants of your dignity about you, and you haven’t seen that in days.

GC: OH D4V3 1 H4V3 S33N 3NOUGH C4RTOON3D P3RV3RS1ONS TO KNOW WH3R3 TH1S 1S GO1NG >;]    
TG: yeah me too   
TG: straight to dvd   
TG: then to be found behind the beaded curtains at the back of any halfway reputable adult emporium

There’s a pop of ozone. At the edge of your vision, you catch the muggy indoor air briefly pixellate.

~

You crackle into existence smelling like overheated metal but by the time you’ve captchalogued your timetables that stink’s gone. There’s another you resignedly crowdsurfing the frothing, gibbering ranks of crocodiles.

sup, you say.

You’re the chillest motherfucker in every single one of paradox space’s infinite timelines so of course he doesn’t jump.

hey man, he says. He’s just laying there checking out the ceiling while they pass him paw over scaly paw above them. You remember doing that: huge gears grind on up there, glowing red hot in the darkness. you here to help me out with these little shits then

yeah sure   
the fuckers can get rowdy and youre not due for a dipping in their sloppy stew for at least another seven hours thirteen minutes and lets say twenty seven seconds by the time ive finished this sentence

A crocodile runs into a wall and you pause to let the

nak _naknak_   
NAK   
nak   
naaaak _NAK_ NAK!!

die down.

yeah its like twenty one seconds now   
cmon bust your ass were gettin out of here

a dipping in their sloppy stew, he says.

exactly what it sounds like, you say.

what it sounds like is the hard vore aftermath of a zoophile bukkake session, he says.

yeah p much, you say.

You’re wading into the middle of the hectic reptile clatter, batting away every inquisitive snout that gets its fangpacked front too close to the bright green tails of your suit. You’re not the kind of guy who’d sacrifice his style for the sake of a consort’s self-satisfaction.

You add, i guess its retrospectively kind of mildly entertaining if youre the sort of creepy shit who gets off on the fresh seaside scent of a helpless young boys desperate brackish tears  
rolling hot and fevered down cheeks as soft and pink as a sweet young girls first ballet slippers  
which  
(spoilers)   
tz is  
but otherwise the whole thing is basically just us checking in at humiliation station  
a stamp on the passport a stroll through the scanner and a slap on the butt from the pointy raving maniac on security once shes checked out our nudes in the x-ray  
you know the drill by now right

sure i know it, he agrees, his arms folded over his chest like a dead kid on a tomb.

You smack a couple crocodiles on the nose and they squawk and let go of him. Of you. Of past you. There’s more clinging onto your trousers and one’s got its foot trapped in the laces of your sweet green spats but you grab his arm and with a good wrench he’s upright again, just like you were thirty-three hours and fifty-two minutes ago when the you that you currently are rescued the you you were then, indignant nakking echoing all around the red steel walls.

but jesus, he carries on, finding his feet, raising his voice, adjusting his cuffs, like getting freed isn’t even a thing, here you are showing up with your temporal spoilers getting me riled with anticipation beyond human endurance then telling me theyre a peach i cant bite into  
this is the exact same shit the big man pulled in eden ok and we all know how that one turned out  
goddamn i cant wait seven hours for this

theoretically you dont have to   
or you didnt have to   
you could have done but if you had id know about it so if you do it now its basically suicide js

ok   
so the only reason im not doing it is because youve just told me i dont

yep

cool glad we got that sorted

any time   
literally

He nods approvingly. Time travel means never having to explain the difference between ironically shitty jokes and actual shitty jokes. 

The consorts chatter non-stop as you nudge them aside but you’ve got as used to them as you’ve got to the heat, and the only LOHAC sound that really registers any more is the dull ticking of gears below the lava counting down your endless day.

grab your hats boys theres nothing to see here, you tell them. They fuck off and their noises echo back through the corridors. 

You cross the floor to a carving on the far side that you know is going to reveal the exit when you touch it. 

You touch it. 

if this guess is too wild feel free to tranquilize it, he says, and you can’t tell through his shades but you know he’s staring down the suddenly revealed flight of geometric golden stairs, gleaming in the fiery light outside the temple and leading all the way down to the ground, because you remember doing it yourself, thirty-three hours and forty-eight minutes ago, but did you by any chance know that secret door was there because future me showed you when you were me

youre catching on

jesus fuck    
that entire time i was climbing up a burning metal tongue thinking i was gonna kark it doing dumb shit with fake npc reptiles because an alien told me to   
and there was a fire exit    
i could have got in through a fucking fire exit

You both take the stairs fast and without touching the handrail, because the handrail is steel so hot its glowing. At the end there’s an asphalt plateau that’s bubbling in places, a nearly molten island in the sea of lava. 

He looks back up at the huge hollow brass crocodile. It reaches nearly to the roof of the cave. Its tongue flops neglectfully from its mouth. 

youve got a few hours on me right, he says.   
tell me do we ever work out if our psychotic intergalactic correspondent is an actual homicidal maniac   
or if she just gets her extraterrestrial rocks off by jeopardizing our existence every so often

yeah its just her keeping us on our toes i think   
but she does it by stringing us up from a rope high enough that we get a choice between staying on our toes or embracing a final endless void jampacked with the kind of clammy tentacle nightmares you just know lalondes internet history is writhing with   
mortal peril is kind of terezis schtick

He follows you to the base of vertiginous steel scaffolding and with a jump and a scramble you pull yourself up onto the lowest rung. 

its been a while since i was you bro, you say.   
remind me what other unmarked spoilers im meant to be airing here

ok for starters its been eating me up inside that the world ended before the final season of boston legal could air   
did those guys bang or what

Far below the lava is belching sparks, gurgling fireballs. You don’t check to make sure he’s following because you know you did when you were him. 

look i am your cross temporal houdini i can get you out of jams stickier than tzs hands as she frantically licks pics of us kickin buckets both metaphorical and literal   
my future knowledge is the anachronistic key to your xenophiliac handcuffs   
yet you ask me for the one thing i cannot deliver    
and the one thing about which i do not give even the driest most dehydrated miserable looking flaky shit

You hook your arm over the top of the structure and haul yourself up onto its riveted sheet steel surface. Grease smears across your pristine lime velvet, but you’ve got a sylladex full of unbelievably sick costumes and back in your timeframe this’ll be the perfect excuse to style them down the icy LOFAF runway. 

There are gaps in the scaffolding. It’s a long way down. 

fucking christ listen to this, he says, climbing to his feet behind you. He’s tapping his shades to open Pesterchum, somewhere in the no man’s land between reluctantly impressed and willingly revolted.   
h3y d4v3 sorry 1 d1d not t3ll you 4bout th3 st41rs!   
1 gu3ss you could s4y th4t…  
yeah then theres like five lines of dots shes really amping up the tension   
ok and then she goes  
1 d1d not w4rn you dog!   
i mean the thicket of insanity here is so dense i cant even tell if theres a peaceful clearing of irony within  
did she actually make me risk this choice wetware for the sake of a sbahj punchline

pyrope plays her cards so close to her chest its more than likely she doesnt actually have any cards and shes just feeling herself up the entire time, you say. You’re facing the light and cutting a silhouette you remember looking more iconically ironic than the bumper sticker mudflap girl. look past me this whole trip has been making sure we live long enough to make sure i live long enough to have this conversation 

well shucks sugarplum i sure do appreciate that 

aint no deal at all darlin   
now look out at the forest of steel struts surrounding us perhaps gaze down at the lava churning beneath our feet   
fix this moment in your mind maybe go so far as to fixate it

what

dave im coming back here in two hours twelve minutes and thirty two seconds from your perspective 

my persp

no ssh only melodrama now   
therell be some unforgivably feisty monsters up here    
youll have an awesome sword by then    
also you should alchemize some chapstick 

what

honeypie im just lookin out for number one

There’s the glimmer of a badly pixellated loading screen when you activate your timetables, and you flicker out of your land and into Jade’s with the stench of overheated gears, crashlanding in a snow drift. 

You definitely remember your exit seeming smoother from the other side, but it’s not like it matters because you know just what happens next.

**Author's Note:**

> now featuring dropdead gorgeous [art by ferrrox](http://toomuchpressure.tumblr.com/post/31328018356/ferrrox-toomuchpressure-submitted-round-the/)!


End file.
